


Where I Drew Water

by bravelikealady



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Modern AU, Southern AU, flashbacks to sexually themed violence etc, no real concrete time au, sansan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-07-11 08:10:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7040323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bravelikealady/pseuds/bravelikealady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While back the Targaryens bought out the ports, the farmland, the mills, and the mines in the Carolinas, and threatened to close ‘em all down unless every patriarch agreed that their word was law. So every family from the mountains to the swamps bent the knee and served as Eric Targaryen saw fit, til his boy took the Stark girl oyster way and she disappeared for months. Her brother Eddard, with her sometimes beau Bobby, ran into Sewee land and it was the beginning of the end for the Targaryen way. But the people looked to Bobby like they looked to Christ and as mouths got fed an unhealthy devotion built up around him, encouraged by his new match’s family, Lannisters, tobacco rich and power hungry. </p><p>Twenty years pass, Bobby is dead, and his supposed son has his claws in the eldest wolf girl, Sansa.  Thanks to that goddamn Baratheon boy, Eddard is gone home with his sister, and Sansa is left to fend for herself in the center of Stag Sites commune.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Break Bad

**Author's Note:**

> This is a southern gothic AU set in the Carolinas, modern language and modern themes, but no concrete timeline. Ages are changed from the books/show. Sansa is 15, Sandor is 22. There are flashbacks to J(offrey)'s violence, which are often sexual in nature, just as in the book, but the modern context and language may make the description seem more graphic. Any romantic notions or feelings between Sansa and Sandor are intended to highlight Sansa's coming of age and the nature of intimacy in trauma, shared or otherwise. This is not condoning relationships outside of clear consent or legal age. Comments that romanticize this problematic aspects will be swiftly deleted. This is my first undertaking of this nature and constructive criticism is welcome and encouraged. Thank you for reading!

 

> _The sunsets come, the sunsets go._
> 
> _The clouds roll by,and the earth turns old._
> 
> _And the young bird's eyes do always glow._

 

She has been screaming long enough to attract Trent when she realizes that she is, in fact, screaming. Sansa meant to push J from the bridge, imagined him dying, dead, gone, just like her father, whose body lay rotting on the altar above. She had pushed him deliberately, she thinks she was even smiling, and watched as he plummeted. But she wasn’t prepared to hear the crack of the bone, the splat of the blood and brains, and to see the life leaking out of him.

 

A hand is clasped around her mouth, her face still bleeding, and she is being lifted. Sansa thinks of fighting hard enough to throw herself off the bridge too, preferring that to whatever Cersei would do to her, but then he whispers, “Pipe down, Bird, before the whole commune knows what’s up.”

 

Hound picks her up and is running with her, seemingly toward the center complex. “They’ll kill me, they’ll kill me, they’ll kill me if we-”

 

She loses track of the panic as he turns through a grove the Tiers 1 harvest from. Lemons, lemons everywhere. She laughs. “Quiet,” he chides her.

 

Beads of sweat cover her in the humidity of the grove and the overdone _thrum thrum thrum_ of her heart. The silk gown sticks to her skin and she tries to cross her arms where her nipples have become visible. She remembers the day J watched her strip and change into the gown by his order, telling her it was beaded and more sheer than girls her age were typically allowed, as if it were some kind of gift, remembers him making her watch as Trent and Bryan took shears to her bras and panties, because she wasn’t allowed them anymore.

 

“You are mine,” he had said, “as soon as you blossom. And I plan to watch. Show off that Northern ass of yours.”

 

“I’m glad he’s dead,” she whispered, still shaken by what she had done, sad that J could never be a man, but knowing now that he would never have been a good one.

 

“Don’t speak too soon, Bird. They still might catch us.”

 

Faces blurred as he ran with surprising speed for carrying her, though she supposed he was a large man and must be very strong. Sansa could not make out who anyone was. The farther they ran the more the faces turned toward them. _They know, people know, word travels fast_. No matter how much land the Baratheons claimed as “Stag Site,” the commune was ultimately small. Soon the blur of Tier 1s became the blur of green, green, green. Hound took a turn where the woods were thick and sat her down on a bed of ferns.

 

“Think you can walk,” he asked, catching his breath. “Only a little further today.”

 

“Where are we going?”

 

“You’re barefoot and you’d clomp til you fell in my boots, can you walk?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“There’s burrs, rocks, likely shit, you’ll get callouses, you’ll bleed.”

 

“Alright.”

 

“Alright?”

 

“Okay,” she said, resisting the temptation to roll her eyes, but just barely. Sansa didn’t ask him to cart her away. Sansa didn’t ask him to not let Trant kill her, to keep her from jumping herself ( _I meant to go over with him, I thought I’d die too, he let go of my gown to try to catch himself, why why why_ ).

 

They walked for probably an hour, the sun set turning the sky the pregnant pink you could only see here, and the warnings he gave were like prophecy. The burr of the bidens dug into her more with every step and her arms got caught on catbriar, little tears forming in her gown. Somehow it was getting hotter, the air thicker. Mosquitoes took to her like she took to honeysuckle. She liked the lowcountry much less outside of air conditioned cabins and thickly netted tents. As the cicadas screamed, she cleared her throat, wanting to speak but unsure of herself.

 

“Need something?”

 

“I…” she started then didn’t know where to go. “I didn’t mean to… I did, only… I…”

 

“Save it, girl. He killed your daddy and drug you out to see. You made a choice. I saw it, on your face. I didn’t move soon enough to stop you.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“You must’ve loved him some wa-”

 

“That stops. That stops now and forever, alright?”

 

“Alright. Sorry. Alright.”

 

The cicada song swelled and the night yawned hot, the bubble of a brook the bass line of the Stag Site symphony, and no matter how hard she strained Sansa couldn’t hear a bit of civilization, or what passed for it in Baratheon county. Pink gave way to purple then to the deep dark blue that she used to dream of back home. The stars were never as bright here, even this far away from the camps. She thought of home now, the stone walls, the cool night breeze, and the low hoot of horned owl, more soothing than the screams of the owls here, singing its night song, reminding the pines of who held what. The owls in this wood, as if on cue to dash her dreams, began to trill, desperate, needy, a cut in the dark rather than a peaceful goodnight. When their screams started it sent chills down her spine. _They sound like women dying, they sound like me._

 

“This cut here is Clegane,” his voice, low and rocky, brought her back from the edge.

 

“You have land?”

 

“My brother has land.”

 

“Oh.”

 

He stopped and looked around, then stared up into the sky. Sansa crept to his side, her feet sinking in mud and joined, standing just to the left of him, looking up for a moment.  _Dim, still dim, but they’re there_ . Moonlight hit his face and his grey eyes glittered. His burns were not too visible from this side, only small patches of skin, mild imperfections that could be confused for normal scarring without context. The way the moon shone down, turning the night faintly blue, made him… _not handsome_ , Sansa thought… _something like a portrait of a man_. He was not beautiful and smooth, like Lory, or even boyishly chiseled and pouty, how she had seen J at first (something in her gut gave a twist as she remembered that face splintered on the ground below her), but there was something to the angles of his face that could be charming, easy to look at it. She was wondering who he might be, if he were not burned, if his brother hadn’t gotten his hands on him… was wondering what it might be like to touch his face, or kiss his cheek, if he and his little cut of land might have made some girl like Jeyne a good wife, when he gave her a glare. She turned to the ground and he returned to his stars.

 

“I can smell the salt here,” she whispered.

 

He whispered back, “Marshlands. We have mostly marshlands. Rough to live off of, but my father was grateful. We made do.”

 

“What are you looking at?”

 

“Here,” he said, placing a hand to the small of her back to move her in front of him. He took her arm and made her index finger point just under his, “See that?”

 

Sansa followed their stacked fingers to a zigzag that tread roughly into a ‘V’ and nodded.

 

“Cassiopeia,” he whispered, and she could feel his breath move her sweat-heavy hair. “Only visible for a week or so longer.”

 

“Do you love stars too? Is that your favorite?”

 

“Favorite?” He gave a snort, “I just know the one. That’s my sister’s name, she was born here, in this field. Came early, surprised us. It was shining down, more than it is now. So Pa named her Cass.”

 

“I’m sorry she died,” Sansa offered. She thought about her own sister, Arya. She wondered where she was, if she was dead. Wondered if she would care about the stars.

 

“Let’s move along. Bit more to go and then we’ll rest.”

 

They moved like she had said nothing.

 

“We need to climb,” they came through a clearing and alongside the water and he pointed to a small fall.

 

“Climb water?”

 

“Rocks just behind, too visible everywhere else.”

 

Sansa folded her arms in front again, fearful of following him any further even more exposed and vulnerable than she already was. She had no idea why he had helped her, no idea what he intended to do.

 

He looked her up and down, “I won’t ogle you, Sansa. That was J’s game, it’s not mine. C'mon.”

 

She followed him through the fall, relishing the cool water. “Rinse if you will,” he told her, “ and drink some in. Slow, small sips.”

 

Sansa did, closing her eyes, smoothing her hair back. He said he would not look, but she felt his eyes on her. It wasn’t like J. She found she didn’t mind. She pretended not to see. After she took a hoist from him, listened as he guided her from rough cut to exposed roof, up the 12 or so feet. It was not much, but it frightened her. She got to the top edge of a rock and waited. He climbed up fast, more nimble than she’d expect a big man to be, and simply reached over her and pulled himself to the land above. He reached down and instructed her to join both of her hands with his fist, pulled her up with one arm, keeping himself steady and stable with the other. She watched the vein pulse in his arm until her knees felt the earth below her, sat that way, catching her breath. Her heart was beating so fast.

 

She looked up at him, looming above, back lit by the full moon, just a shadow in the night. Fireflies flickered around him, painting him as a cut out in the sky, some portal to another world. She had never been here before, knees sinking into clay, so she supposed in a way he was. He took off his tunic and she swallowed hard, afraid he had wanted the same thing as J all along. A gasp escaped her when he tossed it down in front of her.

 

“Cover yourself and let’s go,” he said. “I have no need for modesty and the air’s damn thick out here. Still sweat like a whore in church without it, I’ll bet.”

 

Standing, she slipped it over her drenched gown, tied it just below the waist so it hung comfortably. She was surprised when he took her hand.

 

“It’ll be darker this way and you don’t know the ground, you’ll sink in the mud. You move when I move, Little Bird. That sound okay?”

 

She nodded, wiggling her toes in the mud, marveling at the weight of his rough thumb on her sweating hands. “Can I ask..?”

 

“I reckon. But it doesn’t mean I’ll answer ya.”

 

“Where are you taking me?”

 

“I’m gonna try my best to take you home.”

 


	2. Stomping Ground

> _Good lord take my hand_
> 
> _dried of this promise land_
> 
> _afraid that the sun wont rise for me_

 

“I’m too tired,” Sansa had been working up the courage to say it for half an hour. 

 

She hated to be rude, but hated more saying _I don’t mean to be rude_. In a split second Hound had chosen to get her the hell out of dodge, ending any hope for his own life, forever and ever amen. One decision, and she reckoned it was for her. _Why?_ The why of it didn’t really matter. Every slap of a mosquito, every slide of her footing through the mud, she wondered how she could say she needed to stop, to rest… how she could ever need anything at all from him, when he’d already done so much. 

 

_Why?_ It crept within and without her, humming around like a katydid song, as constant as the pulse of his palm against hers as he led her through the darkness. But no answer came. There was too much to take in… the adrenaline, the fear… she’d killed a man and perhaps bewitched another. Blood on her hands, more on his, but none so rich as that Baratheon boy. 

 

It was nothing in the mountains to always have a dog on your heels but it was one hell of a something in the marshes. And now she was on his, lazing behind under the shade of a live oak as he rang river water from the shirt of his she’d been wearing, insistent that she not stay in the same mud and sweat for days on end. What a strange courtesy for a beast of a man. 

 

_And he was already such a comfort,_ she thought. Sansa felt foolish, ungrateful, selfish, for not realizing until now that he’d been the only blessing in that place. He had helped her navigate J’s attitude almost from the get go, had slipped her cool water when she was pinned in that ventless shed, placed chewing tobacco along her welts, given her fresh cut aloe leaves for the belt burns. Why?

 

But here she was, telling, instead of asking. Good Septa would have popped her good if she were here… but then again Good Septa would never expect her to be damn near naked in the woods with a Clegane. Her teachings never covered murder…. The good book did, but the good book said a lot of things that made less and less sense these days. 

 

“Do what?” 

 

“To keep on. I’m too tired. I’m sorry, I’m just…”

 

They met half ways, the leaves still shading parts of her as she stepped forward, making a kaleidoscope on the ground. He stood in sharp sunlight, the light revealing the true harshness of his burns, but she didn’t see it phase him any. He handed the shirt back to her. It was hardly weighed down by the wet of it, but it was cool. She pulled it over her head, too over it all to be concerned with revealing herself. The back of his hand pressed against her forward, his knuckles were rough, but the act was tender.

 

“You’re clamming up. You been drinking like a told you?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Sipping or gulping?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

He snorted. “Nah. And why wouldje?”

 

“Fine, let’s go on then.”

 

“Only a little bit more, girl. Promise. Won't let you get heat stroke.”   
  


He placed his hand between her shoulders and guided her forward. They walked in silence but for the ripple of the water and songs of the critters. Sansa grimaced each time her bare foot found an acorn, biting her lip to keep from crying out. He kept her in front of him ( _Just in case, little bird; if they get me, you hightail it out of here_ ), sometimes barking out instruction, sometimes giving a little push of the shoulder to guide her along the path he wanted. After what she’d guess had been three hours- her fault, she was slowing down, her thighs were burning- the space between trees widened and tall grass broke on the horizon in soft green contrast to the depth of the ferns and mosses. The grit and grind of the ground turned rootless, welcoming, the grass a much needed cushion for her weary feet and heavy knees. 

 

“What’s that fence,” she asked, her breath quickening. Locals were bound to be looking for her. She knew people didn’t like the way things had gone with J in charge, but she doubted anyone was putting enough food on the table to congratulate her rather than turn her in. 

 

“You’re alright,” he offered. 

 

And he walked on ahead and opened a small gate. 

 

“My papaw’s, mama’s side. Greg doesn’t even know we still have it, I don’t think. We won’t stay long, but you can rest. Think I’ve still got food inside.”

 

“Oh.”

 

She joined him at the gate, stopping before she stepped onto the worn stones that led up to the house. Sansa looked up at his eyes, a grey that made her heartsick, the way an old lullaby does. She thought he’d look away but he didn’t.

“No sign anyone’s been here but I’ll take a look first if it’ll make you feel better.”

 

“No,” she whispered.

 

She wanted to say something, anything. She thought thank you, but it felt so small and insincere in her mind. It’d break if it tried to come out of her. Instead she walked forward. As she opened the screen door onto the sinking porch she started to cry. He pretended not to hear and jimmied open the big green door, insisting she go through first. His manners were good for a hound dog.

 

The foyer smelled like wet wood, not rotted, but hollow like the forest after a good spring rain. She liked it. She didn’t know if she’d ever feel safe again but she was feeling something. A basin attached to a small mirror stood on one side of the place where a door had been taken off its hinges. On the other a big old Bible, King James, sat open on a small table, a red ribbon running down the center, unnecessarily marking the open page. Hound went on in the house proper and Sansa ran her hands down the crisp, thin pages.

>  
> 
> That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;
> 
> That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
> 
> May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;
> 
> And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.

  
  


She wanted it to mean something. But she felt empty. Not full of anything, Christ or love or no. She was tainted now and there was no martyrdom left in it. Blood on her hands. A commandment trampled to dust beneath her feet. Sansa Stark, grounded in love, had died the moment she headed south, forsaking the fragrance of pine and the promise of frost for sticky, pink year round haze of salt watered shores. Sansa Stark, flower bloomed, murderer, creature of rage and bitterness and sinfulness, was all that stood before the good lord now. 

 

She dried it up. She crept into the house. To her right big windows looked out onto the overgrown, acorn littered yard. An abandoned chicken coop came into view from where she stood and she saw the shadow of what may have been a little kennel. Sansa wondered if that legacy landed on both sides of Hound’s family tree as she turned to get a better look at the den, noticing an ancient television on a little bookshelf against the wall, by another doorway, as she did. The corner closest to the strangely doorless arch hid a small, dusty staircase, painted green like the door. A big white door occupied the center of the wall and a great piano lay in the other corner. Some of the keys were trying to escape and Sansa pressed them in. It didn’t do much good, but it felt nice to have her fingers dance with some small purpose. An old hymnal lay closed on the music rack. She thumbed through it, careful lest she split the crinkling, yellow pages, almost swollen from an era in humidity. 

 

He came into the unexplored doorway, startling her, and she dropped the hymnal. His long legs crossed the space with ease and he picked it up before he could, placing it on her lap. 

 

“If I was gon bite ‘cha, I’d done it by now.”

 

Some breath between a gasp and a laugh escaped Sansa. “I’m so... “

 

“Jumpy. I’d be too. Do you eat sausage?”

 

“Sausage?”

 

“It’s all I’ve got right now.”

 

“I eat sausage. I’ll take anything. Thank you. I… thank you.”

 

“You can play that old thing if you like. Not sure how long it’s been since someone who knew what they were doing touched it. Hell, it might bite.”

 

She thought she saw something like a smile, or the ghost of one, as he once again disappeared from view. Sansa lifted the book of songs and saw that it had landed on one her mother was fond of: I Have Come to the Fountain.

 

The piano had never been her favorite. She’d preferred the organ in any case but she made do. Over and over she played the familiar melody, trying to feel the way she’d felt singing between her mother and Robb, trying to do so without thinking too hard, ‘fore she cried again. And soon her eyes were closing, the rhythm taking her over. And soon she was humming, then singing.

>  
> 
> I have passed from the waters of strife
> 
> And come to the Elim of love;
> 
> I have drunk of the heavenly well,
> 
> In the depths of my being it springs.
> 
> No mortal can measure or tell
> 
> The gladness the Comforter brings.
> 
> Oh, come to the Fountain of Life,
> 
> The fountain that never runs dry;
> 
> Oh, drink of the boundless supply-

 

Something stopped her. Her breath had left her body. Reality had betrayed her. Her hands were poised to play but the moment had passed. The house sighed and the cicadas screamed. The sun was setting in the windows, blinding her, making the room go hot. 

 

_It’s over_.

 

“You don’t have to stop singing.”

 

He was there again, leaning against the frame, a stance that she found surprisingly casual considering the circumstances, who they were, who they had always been. 

 

“Supper’s ready, come on now.”

 

The floor creaked underfoot as she followed him, nearly tripping on the step up from warped wood into the little kitchen area. Half the room was tile and it was cool beneath her feet, a sensation that would’ve been lovely if not for the way it made all the nicks and blisters sting. There was a mud room off to the left, the doorway lining up with the others, and the wood there was different, darker, older. She wondered how long the house had been there, how many times the family had built onto it. Just passed it was a table that sat roughly six grown folk, so about four Cleganes. He sat, lumbering over the table, his knees near level with the table. His back was to a window, smaller than those in the den, that looked onto more trees, and Sansa thought she could see a little patch of loblolly in front of the strange mix of oak that punctuated these parts. His shadow took over the floor and yawned over the fridge and stove, which had to be older than Sansa. She sat opposite him, trying to scoot her chair in quiet and proper, but everything was so old that she ought not have bothered with it. The floor groaned and the legs scraped. 

 

“Found preserves, sugar’ll do you good,” he said, biting into the sausage biscuit, the thick red paste squeezing out from the edges. There were three more on his chipped plate. Sansa had two on hers and she wondered if he’d given her a newer, cleaner plate on purpose.

 

“There’s more where it came from. I didn’t gyp you, if that’s what’s got you sore. I can’t trust you to drink water proper, I wasn’t giving you free reign of food in this state.”

 

“No, that’s okay. I’m… no, thank you. This is lovely.”

 

“Go on then. What is it? You wanted to say grace?”

 

He barked a laugh and finished his first biscuit. Something in Sansa twinged, the girl she used to be taking some offense to the way he laughed off saying grace. It was good to be grateful and thankful, though she didn’t really know if she’d ever believed in the good lord listening more so than just liking folding her hands and listening to her father’s soft voice each meal time, or even the choral ceremony of the silly little children’s prayer that she and Bran and Arya would churn out whenever he was away for work ( _God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food..._ ). Whatever it was she was feeling, it wasn’t worth it, and she knew she couldn’t trust her own prickles when she had gone this long without food. He was right; the sugar would do her good. The biscuits were hard and unbuttered, but the sausage was just the right kind of spicy and the preserves were a smooth, cool treat, the texture of the seeds in the jelly coating the sausage as she chewed. 

 

“Strawberry preserves are my favorite. I’m glad you had em.”

  
The sky turned black as she managed to eat three at a safe pace. She licked the sticky from her fingers as Arya would’ve done as he washed dishes just in front of her. Watching his hands work from suds to sink to towel occupied her, kept her thoughts from sneaking away some place dark. Lightning bugs danced at the window as she watched his fingers, remembering his hand grasping her own. She had sometimes watched her mother come behind her father in the kitchen and wrap her arms around his waist, pressing her chest to his back. She wondered what it’d be like to do that to the Hound, to press her body against the warmth of him, to spread her hands over his stomach, his chest. She wondered if she could press her lips to the skin of his neck. She wondered if he’d ever be a man who smiled like her father did, or if he’d be a dog, always, til kingdom come.


	3. Bone Weary

> Come you adolescent morning  
> longest day born anew  
> a cup of sorrow with the early dew
> 
>  

_ A dusky, grey sky welcomes her at her window as she opens her eyes. Fell asleep with the curtains open, hadn’t done that in a while. Robb always tells her that’s how a woodswitch finds you, sends a bat to look in on you sleeping, so she can measure you, make ready the right cauldron. Sansa can’t see the yard from this angle but she knows it is covered in snow. She smiles. Lady is panting just below her window. Her wolfgirl always know when she’s about to wake up. She can hear the other pups snipping and whining playfully, not too far out. She gives a stretch and a sigh and wraps her hands around the rails of her daybed. Ice cold. The smile on her face grows bigger. Lazily, she pulls herself up, still tangled in the down comforter and the throw wrapped closest to her body. Her eyes widen. The yard is snow covered… but something’s wrong…  _

 

Mama, _ she cries out.  _ Daddy! Daddy!

 

_ No one comes. She realizes how quiet the house is. _

 

_ She wants to find someone, anyone, but she can’t tear her eyes away. The creek at the bottom of halfacre hill that separates their home from the training yard has risen, overflowed… blood-red, somehow climbing, she opens her mouth to scream and- _

 

“GIRL!”

 

Her own desperate gulp for air is so loud it scares her. Hound. His hands are wrapped tightly around her wrists, pulling her forward off of the hard mattress he’d offered her upstairs. He’d been sleeping on a makeshift cot on the floor with her, she remembered. She remembered. She… remembered it all… 

 

Sansa closed her eyes and tried to remember to breathe. 

 

“That’s it,” she heard him say, his voice cutting through the fog of her mind. “You’re ‘lright, you’re ‘lright.” 

 

She hit play on the things that had kept her sane before- before she- 

 

_ I am Sansa Stark,  _ she thought,  _ and Winterfell is my home. I am 15, almost 16. My mama is Caitlin. My daddy is Edward. Arya is lost, but I’ll get her back. Somehow, somehow, somehow…  _

 

“There you go, here, hang on,” she felt him slip away from her and she opened her eyes. He’d burst through a small door she hadn’t noticed in the room last night. A small half bath it seemed to be. He brought back a cup of water.

 

Shakily, she took it from him. Her cheeks were wet. And now getting hot from embarrassment. 

 

“Sips,” she said.

 

“Yeah, you’re learning.”

 

She sipped the water. It was only out of the tap but it felt cooler than anything else inside of or around her at the moment. She was grateful of it. It seemed to tuck her back into her body.

 

She’d emptied half the cup when she sat it on the floor, placing her feet firmly on the floor. He was facing the door to the room, ever vigilant, as she stared at the window opposite. The faded brown blinds were gap-toothed and lazy.  _ Doing a piss poor job _ , she thought, angry with blinds of all things. The sun ran honey through the branches outside and took advantage of the spaces between, blinding her. But she couldn’t look away. All was quiet in here, but out there all kinds of birds sang and yelled, disrespectful of what the hour was for them.

 

“You must think I’m real stupid.”

 

“Hmm,” he gave out, noncommittal, unclear.

 

He stood and excused himself to the bathroom. Sansa picked at the raw spots on her hands. She wondered what her mother would think. She wondered if this is how Arya lived now, if she was even alive. She settled on it not mattering. Nothing mattering.

 

When he came back she’d just ripped a blister raw by picking too much.

 

“I know you think I’m stupid. You’ve told me as much.”

 

“Stop it,” he growled. She didn’t know if he meant talking or picking, unsure of what about her he was staring at disapprovingly. 

 

He turned and rummaged through a chest of drawers for a while, like she’d said nothing at all, but didn’t seem in a hurry to get dressed. A part of her was a little miffed that he hadn’t considered that he was indecent and they were up now, daylight and all… 

 

She stood and ran her hands through her hair, shaking the loose strands that came with onto the floor. Sandor was tossing some things on the ground, others he was laying out on top of the chest. She watched as he did this, twisting her hair up and into a tight knot as she did. Little strands kept falling, driving her crazy, but she gave up. His back seemed to have more muscles than any other man she’d ever seen. She wondered if it was just because the Cleganes were so big or… or something else.  _ He’s not so much older than Robb and Jon, is he? _ There were scars along his arms and his back that she’d not noticed before now.  _ Probably from battles _ , she thought, remembering that her father had those as well. Even Robb had a few from drills. She realized this was the first time she’d seen a man in so little clothing who wasn’t a family member in bathing trunks. Maybe that’s why it felt like she was looking at him… different… 

 

“Here.”

 

Sansa jumped a little bit, like he hadn’t been standing about three feet in front of her this whole time.

 

“Goodness girl,” he snorted. “I’m gonna dig through this mess on the floor to see what’ll fit me. This stuff up top here oughta be fine for you to travel in. Get dressed.”

 

For a minute she thought he meant right there in front of him, but he scooped up his pile and left, closing the door behind him. 

 

She’d just settled on wearing sleeves, despite the heat, to keep her protected from the bugs and the sun a bit, sliding on a thin, plaid shirt, when he knocked on the door but walked right in anyhow. 

 

“Put the rest in here,” he threw a ratty old knapsack at her feet. “Meet me downstairs when you’re ready, try not to take too long. Wanna head out before the sun hits right above us.”

 

  
  
  
  



End file.
